Show HN: Ratemydorm.com | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Ratemydorm.com

ratemydorm.com

40 pointsjedcaluag13 comments

Hey everyone, this past month I built the website RateMyDorm.com - think RateMyProfessors but for dorms. You can read reviews from other students and filter through dorms based on rating, amenities, or class year. When I was a freshmen at Boston U, I wondered why there was no resource to read dorm reviews. Thanks to quarantine, I finally got around developing it and I'm hoping this can grow to a platform that will be helpful to college students everywhere. If you can help contribute, please check out the site and rate a dorm you've lived in! Thanks.

> When I was a freshmen at Boston U, I wondered why there was no resource to read dorm reviews.

Back in the day, this resource was called the school newspaper and its annual special section on the housing lottery. Oh, and asking your friends.

And if you’re a pre-frosh, you got a randomly selected room - you learn about your paper-thin walls, hot radiators, and too-small sinks at the same time as your fellow neighbors -- it’s part of the experience.

Part of the explosion in college costs has been the development of student housing. It’s insane how nice some college housing is for undergrad.

When I started at a state school in 2003 we had dorms built in the 60’s that resembled the architecture of the Soviet Union and came equipped with elevators that literally stopped mid floor that you’d crawl out of.

When I finished they were tearing those down as they opened glass and steel modern high rises.

Stony Brook University?

That's a great site. Do you intend to provide pricing information, or guildelines about what students should expect to pay in different locales; maybe price range/bracket?

Congrats on the launch! It’s always exciting to share something you worked hard on.

Is there any validation that the user is actually from the selected college? It seems I can write a review about a random dorm just by selecting it. What about using the student’s .edu email address to validate the submission? Just a validation code in the email should be enough. Good luck on the launch though!

In an alternative universe, this is how Airbnb would've started.

It's a pretty good website though. Are students in the US going back to school during the summer? Here (Tunisia), we're going back next week.

Yes you could also start a book of faces this way.

Aslema!

Looks really nice and congrats on the launch! I would probably add a social login or some barrier for anonymous submissions since it will probably collect spam submissions. I noticed you have to approve every submission but it probably won't scale very well if it gets more popular.

Looks pretty good and super handy. You can actually rule this space with SEO itself.

Looks cool man!

Slightly related, parody website I made: ratemyroommate.io

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